Somewhere Between Ko Pha-Ngan and Malaysia
“Hey what if we went to Malaysia?”
“That would be cool with me.”
-Roxanne and I, about one week ago.
And now, here we are. Somewhere in Malaysia.
If you had asked us a month ago if we were going to to this country, we would have kindly laughed and said no, no, that’s not on the schedule. Ko Samet was supposed to be the next destination. Yet, we’ve somehow managed to head much, much farther south. Huh.
Tired of the semi-touristy islands, especially after Ko Pha-Ngan during this time of the month, we switched plans completely. To head to a new country. That we didn’t even talk about seeing when planning for this trip.
Man, I’m excited.
After doing preliminary research, Malaysia seems incredible. We’re going to its capital city, Kuala Lumpur, and we’ll see where we go from there. Maybe Penang, maybe somewhere closer to the city, maybe back up to Bangkok. The freedom is exhilarating.
As of now, however, we’re just traveling toward this unexpected destination. We took an overnight boat yesterday, sleeping on these very odd, thin beds surrounded by floor mattresses with other passengers atop them. From there, we shuffled into a taxi, which was again in the style of a pickup truck with a roof attached to the back and seats along the rails, around 4 a.m.
We soon traded the taxi for the most uncomfortable minivan of my life. We had seats with the backrest honestly at an acute angle, no room to put our knees, and a jutting ledge right where we would normally rest our heads along the window. This was tight for me, and I’m only 5’3”. The ride was also about four hours long, and it was so bad that all we could do was laugh. Really -- we made jokes until we cried.
Currently, it is 5 p.m. (4 p.m. Thailand time) and Roxanne and I are now in a much more spacious, regular sized bus, with our feet outstretched straight in front of us. We are living large, excited to move onward with our adventure.
Update at 3:05 a.m.:
We are exhausted. We cannot utter complete sentences. We haven’t slept in days. Rox and I finally got to our hostel and just went to 7-Eleven to buy a Cup O’ Noodles for dinner. We then bought another. It was so hard to walk that block. I want to sleep. I just learned 7-Eleven is properly spelled 7-Eleven and not 7/11 or 7-11 as it is on the signs. That’s so misleading. Goodnight.